


in the desert, you can remember your name

by AnnaofAza



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Brief suicidal thoughts, Gen, Keith-Centric, M/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-21
Updated: 2019-03-21
Packaged: 2019-11-26 22:25:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18186425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnaofAza/pseuds/AnnaofAza
Summary: You take the clothes on your back, the dog tags he’d shoved into your hands before the launch, the crunched up dollar bills saved from birthdays and holidays. And the hoverbike.They might come after you, but what can they do to you? What can they take that they haven’t already?Or, Keith's time in the desert.





	in the desert, you can remember your name

Everything hurts. Everything hurts so much.

You run. You take the clothes on your back, the dog tags he’d shoved into your hands before the launch, the crunched up dollar bills saved from birthdays and holidays. And the hoverbike.

They might come after you, but what can they do to you? What can they take that they haven’t already?

* * *

You find the old cabin.

For a while, repairing keeps you busy. You fix the generator, the pipes, the electricity. You crouch beneath the house or in cramped spaces with splintery wood panels, twisting wrenches and connecting copper and wiping your forehead with the backs of your knuckles. Sometimes, the metal digs into your hands or a screw becomes stripped or a panel falls, but you don’t care. The repetitiveness of it all is soothing, keeps your mind off of things.

At night, you collapse on the beaten-up couch, still sweat-streaked from the day’s work, but at least, you can sleep.

If you’re lucky, it’s completely blank, a canvas of black. If not, you dream in flashes—flying through the desert, staring out the window, going over old Garrison drills.

Sometimes, you dream of your dad, washing dishes in the sink with a gray rag, fiddling with the radio with careful fingers, or coming home from a shift, smelling strongly of smoke and kerosene. And you realize this isn’t right, that this is w _rong—a_ nd when you embrace him, he burns in your arms.

You wake up, cold with sweat and still smelling that smoke, and your mind cries out in that tinny, seven-year-old voice— _Dad!_

The ache in your chest burns, and you take out the knife from beneath your pillow and hold it in your hands.  

* * *

_The Kerberos mission…the pilot, the crew…appear to be lost._

_Lost. Lost. Lost._

* * *

You’re counting the days, the weeks in your head, and you tell yourself you need to fix the roof. Summer is coming, and heat in Arizona slowly roasts you alive, drying you from the outside in. ( _Like beef jerky,_ your dad liked to joke.) The overhead fan and the slowly-oscillating ones dragged out from the basement won’t help if you have a gaping hole overhead.

And there will be monsoons, with whirlwind torrents of rain and dust—and dust storms; all of that sand forcing its way into the cabin makes your teeth grit.

So you go to town, buy what you need, and lay on your stomach or sit back on your knees, jacket tied around your head like a turban, and begin laying boards across and pound, pound, pound the nails. The protective gloves around your hands make your palms sweat, but it’s better than having to stop to pull out splinters with the tweezers from the bathroom cabinet. They also somewhat cushion the blow when you sometimes slip, end up whacking a finger instead of a nail.

Sweat drips down your back, your neck, and runs down the length of your hair. You want to take off your shirt, but don’t dare—you know exposure will be worse, will make you pay with lobster-red skin and heat rash.

Despite that, though, your skin begins to peel, revealing angry-red but smooth patches, and you wince while showering, even with lukewarm water. White strips pull off like the skin of an apple, and your shoulders protest when you reach back to rub aloe on your shoulders and what you can reach of your back. You sometimes cover them with bandages, to keep them from rubbing against your shirt.

You try to work in the evenings, but it’s hard to do it by lamplight, trying to keep track of your hands and the edge of the roof. For now, you keep working, and at the end of the day, drape tarp over your work, praying that it won’t rain or storm or fall apart during the night.

* * *

Pain, you think, deserves to be felt. But you don't hurt yourself, not even like this, in the darkest hours curled up in your bed, hearing the same words from the broadcast, from the whispered voices in the dining hall, from the funeral. It won't do you any good, and no one will come, or know. 

* * *

One day, you slip off the roof, and the sand scorches your skin, like falling onto a hill of fire ants. You’re too winded to yell, head spinning, knocked out under the white sun.  

_Get up,_ you tell yourself. _Get up!_

Morbidly, you wonder if you never do, how long it will take until someone finds you. Probably never. No one’s looking.

Shiro would look.

You force yourself to roll over on your stomach, brace yourself before standing on wobbly legs. Your head still sort of hurts, and you don’t need to be a doctor to figure out that isn’t good. You need to stay awake, at least for a few hours.

There’s no way you’re going back on that roof today, though, so you trudge into the cabin. You want to lie down, but you don’t dare—instead pace in circles like a caged animal, afraid to do anything more strenuous.

_Not today,_ you think. _Not today._

* * *

Days pass with unrelenting slowness. What needed fixing no longer needs it. The books in the cabin—textbooks, old paperbacks, a firefighter’s manual—don’t occupy you for very long. You can only coax out a few songs from the radio—never the news. You clean the cabin, sweeping the dust out with a broom whose bristles have seen better days. You pace, more and more.

You try experimenting with the canned goods, make chili or tacos or sloppy joes. You think about repairing your dad’s old guitar in the basement, but don’t dare, in case you break it, and you know you can’t afford to repair it—or even afford new strings. You sing—a little—under your breath. You talk to yourself, act out conversations you’ve already have or make up in your head.

You rail against the Kerberos mission to fellow classmates, to reporters, to Commander Iverson, to Admiral Sanda, to even Adam, once. You relive punching Iverson in the face, hearing the snap of cartilage.

You go over everything, turning it this way and that, and think of all the roads you could have taken, what you could have done. Maybe you should have tried to get him to stay. Maybe you should have tried to get on the mission, even, though you know cadets are never allowed on deep-space missions.

You were close to graduating. Shiro had promised to be there, take you out for a celebratory dinner, and you would have—if you could—if you worked up the courage—

No. It doesn’t matter. Not now.

* * *

But you could have. Not with Adam, of course, but you could have, you think, if you weren’t such a coward. During a late-night cramming session for Professor Montgomery’s hellish classes. After one of the adrenaline-rushing hoverbike races. On the roof of the Garrison, just looking at the stars.

Or during that meteor shower, the one that fell on your birthday. Shiro had been so close to you, so close that you could count the individual eyelashes, the slight curve of his smile, where the line of his crew cut ended on his neck. He had on that thin white cotton t-shirt, brown leather jacket spread underneath his head like a pillow. And even though you don’t remember the exact words, you talked for hours, even after the last meteor disappeared into the horizon, about everything and nothing—about your dad, about Shiro’s mom back in Japan, about galaxies, about childhood memories, about life out there, about the Garrison, about after.

You would be a pilot, you said. And, shyly, you added, Shiro’s co-pilot. If he wanted.

Shiro had turned his head towards you and smiled. _Of course. Together, we’ll be unstoppable._

* * *

Sometimes you cry. Sometimes you yell. You’d love to punch something, but you know you’ll have to fix it later.

Sometimes you just stay inside, lying on the bed, telling yourself you’ll get up. List all the tasks in your head. But you never manage to stir yourself.

You sleep for long stretches of time, sometimes waking up with a gnawing in your stomach and cotton in your mouth. You roll out to go to the bathroom, sometimes eat tinned spaghetti or beans, eaten from the can with a rinsed spoon. And you go back to sleep again.  

You wake up stale and sweating. Your head hurts. And sometimes, you hear something, _Look. Look. Look._

But you keep sleeping.

* * *

Eventually, though, you start wandering.

You take the map you bought at the tiny corner store in town, water, some ready-to-eat meals or protein bars, and a flashlight, but that’s all the effort you’re willing to put in.

You don’t have a specific destination in mind, so you drift. You trudge through the sand, through stones, feeling them shift underneath your feet. You glance at the occasional cacti, sometimes a hollow hole where birds make their nests. You kick aside rocks or idly stack a few on top of each other.

You don’t sit down, or stop to rest. You keep going.

The sun pierces. Your hands and back and crooks of your knees feel clammy with sweat. Your hair sticks to the back of your neck.

All the while, you hear humming in your head, like the buzzing of bees. Or purring of a hoverbike. You don’t know, but it seems to form words in the back of your mind, rolling in like fog. There’s not a human voice to it, exactly, and you kind of wish it was.

But you keep walking.

* * *

You sing to yourself. Old country songs Dad liked. Radio hits Shiro and Matt used to belt out. Half-formed ones of those you don’t quite remember, that you add your own words to.

Your water is gone.

Which isn’t good, you know. You need to go back. Replenish.

But the haze in your head doesn’t seem to let you care. You keep going. What does it matter?

_It’s killing me when you’re away…_

You should have kissed him. Or at least told him.

The funeral. The march. The speeches. The yawning ache in your chest.

No one knew what to do when you began to cry.

Every step hurts now.

You're drained of tears. Maybe that's good. You'll lose less water.

Something is near. You can feel it. Or maybe it’s delirium.

You count the steps you take. The cacti. The rock formations. The stars above. You tilt your head back as you walk. Twenty-five. Twenty-six. Twenty-seven.

You keep losing count after a while, though, so you start naming the constellations you can pick out. You knew them before you sat foot in the Garrison. You knew about the _Calypso,_ the Jupiter mission.

You wanted to run, escape far into the stars and never come back.

_Here. Here._

With a slide, you slip—down into a ditch, skidding against dust and dirt and pebbles. You manage to stumble into a crevice, nearly hidden by the shadows of the night, then collapse.

The cave floor is cool against your cheek, your sun-blistered hands. At least, you think, this is shelter. Once you’re ready, you can go back.

But you don’t have water. Your head still feels too full, too empty all at once. And you ache, all over.

You’re dying, you think, as your eyes begin to close. And that doesn’t scare you at all.  

Maybe you’ll see Shiro again. Or Dad. Or if you're lucky, Mom. 

* * *

Something nudges you awake.

_Shiro_ , you think, it’s so familiar.

But when you open your eyes, there’s no one there. Only the cave. And—

Etchings.

You run your fingers over the carvings. Maybe it’s from some ancient civilization—but that’s impossible. Someone would have found this, right? We’ve scraped beyond the galaxy. How could we miss something so close to home?

They’re humming underneath your fingertips. It’s like the radio back in the shack, unintelligible but alive.

Yeah, you’re crazy.

* * *

Crazy or not, you come back.

You take pictures with a cheap polaroid. You bring pieces of paper and carefully rub a pencil over the carvings. You stay up late, pinning and sketching and taping and connecting. You write yourself notes on the Post-its left over from marking your Garrison textbooks. ( _Staying organized is key,_ Shiro kept telling you. He even got you a planner for Christmas, along with the pair of black hoverbike gloves you always wear now.)

You draw on the map, too, because you don’t really need it anymore. You know this place now, like the back of your hand.

You take the camping lantern, a flashlight, basic supplies, and sometimes just camp out in the cave all night. It’s peaceful in a way that you’ve never felt before, the closest feeling to watching the sun set across the canyons with your dad or the stars above the roof of the Garrison with Shiro.

It still hurts, but here, it seems easier to bear. When you fall asleep on the cool ground, head sliding from the rough walls, you dream of stars. Racing through nebulas. Soaring over suns. Sometimes, you feel energy in your hand, something that feels as steady as the knife strapped to your hip. And joy—painfully indescribable, almost choking when you wake up.

The carvings are still a constant source of mystery. They’re boxy drawings, but you feel like this is intentional. And each of them center around this creature—a dog? No, a lion. A blue one, according to one of the carvings, filled in with a deep shade of blue you’ve never seen before. Even when you carefully run your fingers over it, the color doesn’t come off.

There are circles with triangles around them—a sun? Figures with their arms raised—with swords? And crescents and columns—a building? Art pieces?

You still have your datapad, but nothing you search seems to add up. You even head to the library, browsing through books you’re sure no one has touched in decades—besides maybe some archaeology and history professors in tweed. It’s easy to hide in the stacks, to avoid the shuffling librarian typing on her computer or an occasional group of students settling down for a study session.

Much to your relief, none of them are from the Garrison—just kids, barely older than you, their main concern about passing chemistry or who to ask to the next dance. Their whole world is school, sports, friends, family, crushes.

None of them mention the Kerberos Mission, and that both relieves and angers you. It’s barely been a year. How could people forget, or push it aside?

You never could. And you’ll do it alone.

* * *

You still find nothing, but you keep visiting the cave. Your mind now seems clearer, sharper, even though the carvings still make no sense.

Maybe you won’t find out anything, and that’s okay. For some reason, as the days go by, you feel lighter. More optimistic. Some days, you even get out of bed and think, _I can do this._

* * *

One night, you’re ready to go to sleep when something shivers in your bones, presses gently into your head like a shoulder tap.

_Tonight,_ it whispers. _Tonight._

Behind your eyes, you feel that energy pulling you, like a string, towards the direction of the Garrison. Your heart races, and you  jump up—grab a handkerchief, your bag of smoke bombs, the keys to your hoverbike—and rush outside, just as a bright light streaks over the shack, silver and blue and not of this world.

The humming in your head grows louder, almost urgently, and all of the synapses in your body are firing all at once, so much that your legs feel weak, and you reach up, clutching the dog tags beneath your shirt.

_Go. Go._

You obey.


End file.
